Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Der alte Hexenmeister

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TIA!---CH 04:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

A bit of background for this RfC

I dare say that anyone who stumbles over this RfC will be startled by the vitriol evident in some of the relevant contributions. Some of this vitriol is aimed at myself. I am not sure I really understand why, but here is my modest attempt to provide a bit of background which may partially explain why some of the parties in this RfC seem to have past familiarity with one another:

If I am not mistaken, User:Der alte Hexenmeister is the same individual as a frequent poster in the sci.physics UseNet newsgroups, who uses handles such as

1. Androcles,
2. Hexenmeister,
3. The Sorcerer.

Anyone checking some random postings from this poster(s) will see that the signature explicitly confirms that these three handles (at least) are used by one and the same individual. See also Androcle's website. Both the similarity of the username of the Wikipedia user under discussion in this RfC and his contribs strongly support the assumption that User:Der alte Hexenmeister is indeed the same indvidual who is a frequent poster under these three handles.

Anyone checking the contribs of Der alte Hexenmeister (talk · contribs · block log) will see that many of his contribs refer with apparent sarcasm to "Schaefer" and "Hillman". As far as I know, by Schaefer, Hexenmeister means Ed Schaefer, who is a former frequent poster to sci.physics.relativity as Edward Schaefer. And as far as I know, by Hillman, Hexenmeister means Chris Hillman (myself); many years ago, I was also a frequent poster to sci.physics.relativity as Chris Hillman. However, my recollection is that I never interacted very much with Androcles/Hexenmeister, and I have not extensively edited Theory of relativity or many other str-related articles, although I have extensively edited articles related to more advanced areas of math/physics. This is one reason is why I am a bit puzzled by the embittered tone of his comments in Talk:Theory of relativity and User talk:Der alte Hexenmeister.

Also, another user who has commented on Hexenmeister's talk page is Jowr (talk · contribs), who posts to sci.* as Eric Gisse.

Let me stress that I am not trying to indict Hexenmeister on the basis of past behavior in other fora, although a cursory check does suggest that his UseNet posts have tended to be inflammatory. Rather, I am simply trying to explain for the benefit of others why Hexenmeister seems to think he knows Ed and myself. But I think it is acceptable for me to add that I hope and expect that the Wikipedia community will not tolerate the kind of incivility which is unfortunately routine in the UseNet groups. Or as Jimbo recently put it,

I think people stay when we provide a welcoming, friendly, loving environment in which differences are respected and quality work is appreciated. They leave when we fail at those things.

— Jimbo Wales, 16 June 2006 comment in User:Linuxbeak/Wikimania 2006/Wikipedian Survey

Jimbo also mentioned the charitable mission aspect of Wikipedia, or as I like to put it: editing the Wikipedia is a privilege, not a right; editing is a service to the readers of the Wikipedia, which is in the end a general purpose encyclopedia, so in my view, all edits must ultimately be evaluated in terms of how well they serve our readership in the furtherance of the goal of providing a universal free on-line high quality general encyclopedia. This is why disruptive or POV-pushing edits are not acceptable; inflammatory talk page comments have more to do with the collegial social process by which the WP continues to be expanded and improved by volunteer labor.

Hexenmeister's talk page comments have so far tended to be very hard to read because of their peculiar formating. Somewhere (the help desk?) I think I saw a comment by Hexenmeister explaining that he has a visual disability (sorry, can't find the link right now). Apparently he has been having some trouble learning how to set his preferences/browser so that he can easily read and edit Wikipedia articles and talk pages. I don't know much about this type of accessibility issue, but I trust that there is a plentitude of Wikipedians who know how to fix this kind of problem. I mention this because this technical issue may provide an innocuous explanation for Hexenmeister's messy talk page style (too date) – while not providing an acceptable excuse for badly misformatted edits of articles.

As can be seen from User talk:Der alte Hexenmeister, I have made some attempt to try to urge him to take note of various WP behavioral policies, and have also made some attempts to teach him some wikiskills. What I find disturbing about my brief exchanges with him is that Hexenmeister seems so far to resist the pleas of those users who have urged him to avoid

1. disruptive edits of articles, including incipient edit warring,
2. incivil talk page comments.

Hopefully comments by other Wikipedians who Hexenmeister is not already irritated with (such as myself) will soon persuade him that Wikipedia has a significantly different culture and standards of behavior than UseNet.---CH 04:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Response to Hexenmeister's response

In the project page, Hexenmeister makes a number of comments regarding the edits being cited. For the most part, he declares his edit to be "fact".

Simply put, his facts are not facts at all, but opinions. His claim of a "third postulate" for relativity is unfounded. What he calls the "third postulate" is known as the Einstein synchonization procedure, and provides an operational definition on which utilitzed the constancy of the speed of light. It certainly qualifies as an underlying premise (and sometimes Hexenmeister uses that term instead), and is a critical part of special relativity, but is not a postulate.

The next claim of Hexenmeister is that this definition applies even when the clocks are in relative motion. In the rest frame of the clocks, the synchronization procedure is still good, but in the frame where the are perceived to be moving the clocks cannot be synchronized by sending signals between each other, but instead must synchronize with a clock in the observer's own "rest" frame. None the less Hexenmeister claims erroneously that this definition must hold good in the frame where the clocks appear to be moving for the light going between the clocks. More importantly, he claims that this is what Einstein called for, and that is just plain false. (Note however that if this claim was true, then relativity would not be self-consistent as Hexenmeister also claims.)

Hexenmeister also makes claims about the principle of relativity being created by Copernicus instead of Galileo. Once again, that is false.

Most important is that Hexenmeister has no support for his views amongst scientists and scolars, or is the general public at all aware of this (although he does have a reputation amongst those familiar with his USENET postings). His views are therefore original research and are properly dismissed under WP:NPOV#Undue_weight. --EMS | Talk 16:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Gone?

Der alte Hexenmeister was blocked on 6/23, and has not been heard from since. As the block was good for only 24 hours, I must conclude that he is gone. --EMS | Talk 16:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Not gone

Der alte Hexenmeister has returned, and has been putting a {{POV}} tag on theory of relativity. He has been blocked again, but I'm quite sure that he will be back again.

I will document the new campaign in the project page later. --EMS | Talk 15:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)